The fact that San Francisco real estate agents underprice their property listings isn’t a surprise as 75% of listings in San Francisco sell for more than their list price. But there are times when underpricing’s results are even surprising to us agents.
This week’s winner comes from a ho-hum, vintage Golden Gate Heights/Sunset special.
Having been in the same family since it was built in 1939, this 2-bed, 1.5-bath vintage house on 14th Avenue has about 1300 sqft currently and sits on a very large 3800-sqft parcel (the usual parcel size for the City is about 25 x 100 ft). The house was cleaned up for sale with the parquet floors being redone, the vintage 1940s/50s kitchen cleaned up and the oh-so-vintage knotty pine den sparkling. Despite having original materials like the almost-certain asbestos floors, asbestos-wrapped heating ducts in the unfinished garage and a (peaceful) death on property, the 2319 received 30 offers and closed well above its $995,000 list price at a $1,200/sqft+ price of $1,600,000 — some 161% of list price. Why? Perhaps the house really is “special” (according to the marketing remarks) or perhaps its proximity to West Portal or maybe fevered competitive bidding did what it was supposed to do. Either way, it’s confirmation that the market in San Francisco is as strong as ever. It’ll be fascinating to see what happens to 2319 next.